


How the Apple Falls

by LlamaLlamaNewt



Series: Stucky Fics [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Friendship, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes Returns, Emotional Baggage, Filicide, Gen, Hydra (Marvel), Memory Alteration, Other, Past Brainwashing, Protective Steve Rogers, Recovery, Red Room, Regret, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 14:00:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3384251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LlamaLlamaNewt/pseuds/LlamaLlamaNewt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The Asset starts remembering who he was, who is he, and who he has been. Then, he remembers some thing about himself he's ashamed of, and doesn't know how to cope with. </p><p>Steve finds him in the middle of the night, and helps him through it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How the Apple Falls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Camikila](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Camikila/gifts).



> Camikila prompted this, so blame her that I'm writing this and not Family Ties or Nadine's Coffee. 
> 
> Stucky kills my souls. Yes. Souls. Because I steal yours, and then they're mine. 
> 
> Anyways, here it is. I hope it tears at your heartstrings like it did to mine while I wrote it.

 

 

 

From the moment the Asset had seen the red-headed woman in DC, he knew, he just  _knew_  that he'd met her before. If only he could remember where. 

She was a companion of the Captain's. His failed mission. 

A confidant of Fury. The mission he wasn't so sure he'd completed despite shooting the man in the back through a brick wall. The Captain complicated things it seemed. 

 

Then SHIELD and Hydra fell. Cut off one head... the Asset had people to find. The same people the Captain, his flying sidekick and the woman were after it seemed. Traitors to SHIELD. Hydra. So he followed (lead), and... made their path a little more obvious.

 

As the Asset spent more time off ice, more things started coming back to him. Smells. History. Places. James.

Russia. He'd spent quite a lot of time in Russia. Most of his time in fact. The woman was Russian. He'd only heard her speak English, but he  _knew_  she was from Russia. 

 

_Natalia_  came to him eventually.  _Natalia._  Her red hair, as fierce and fiery as her personality. Smooth, efficient dancing, cultivated into smooth efficient killing. 

**_Red Room_.**  

She had been in the Red Room program. But... she'd been special in some way.  

 

Nothing more came to him until he'd joined the Captain, Falcon and the Black Widow out in the open rather than from the Shadows. 

Black Widows. There had been five of them. Strong, Beautiful, Fit, Lethal. He'd trained them to kill. He'd trained them to be efficient. Too efficient. 

They'd been enhanced. Manipulated, like he had... but... because of him. 

 

He stayed at the insistence of the Captain. He spoke Russian with the woman, Natasha. She remembered him, but gave no clue to how well they knew each other. He practices shooting with the Hawk. Tinkered with Stark. The son of the man he killed, a former friend of the man he'd been before. James.

Slowly, James started seeping through, as did more memories. He became less of the Asset and more of the man he'd been before, just with better skills, more memories... an aged James Buchanan Barnes. An old soul. A formerly good man now with red in his ledger, blood on his hands. 

He remembered experiments. Blood tests, tissue tests... DNA sequencing, genetic material.

 

_Natalia. Varvara. Sacha. Alina. Darya._

The girls he'd trained. The girls he'd doomed to die.  _His daughters_. 

 

 

James woke with a start, sitting upright, breathing heavily. She was the last. Natasha was the last. When the Black Widows had gotten too efficient... They'd been terminated. When they'd refused to kill each other... he'd been thawed out, and sent to finish the job. First Yelena, in Prague. Then Darya in Berlin. Varvara in Venice. Sacha in Moscow. Alina in London, and then the youngest Natalia, he'd found in a small village in Turkey. 

He'd tracked them across Europe. He'd killed them one by one, under orders of his handlers. But by the time he tracked down Natalia, he'd been out for nearly 2 months. Natalia was good. His mission was less clear. He let her live. Made it look like she was dead instead. 

"Беги, моя дочь." Begi, moya doch'. Run, my daughter. And she had. She'd disappeared into the wood work once more, becoming a legend, a feared assassin in her own right. 

Years later, he ran into her again. Shot her to take out a target. It soothed the mission he'd never truly completed. After all, she could have died from that shot. a few inches higher, and she would have. Hydra never needed to know that he'd shot too low. 

James finally understood. Natasha was his. His fault, his responsibility. His greatest failure as the Asset, and his greatest triumph as a Soldier. He was proud of the woman, the hero she'd become. He was just appalled at how he'd helped her get there. 

He flung the blankets off of his body, getting to his feet quickly, pacing beside his bed for a moment, before throwing his door open and walking out into the hallway. he paced through the dark to the kitchen. He grabbed a glass, filled it with water from the tap, and drank it quickly. It didn't help. He smacked his flesh had on the marble counter top in frustration before leaning forward and resting his head in his folded arms. 

Footsteps behind him. The Asset startled. Bare feet. Male. Tall. Steve. The Asset retreated.

James sighed heavily. 

Steve didn't turn on the light, but continued towards where James was leaning on the counter. He moved purposefully, telegraphing his movements. 

"Is everything alright?" Steve asked resting a hand on James' back. 

"I'm sorry for waking you Steve. Go back to bed."

"I'm awake now. You might as well tell me what's wrong," Steve responded sitting on the floor by James' feet, leaning against the cabinetry. 

James sighed again, lifting his head and moving to sit across from Steve. "I was just... remembering."

"Not good memories I'm assuming," Steve said his arms resting loosely on his raised knees. 

"You know how we used to talk about the future? Our families, living next door to each other, helping with each others' kids."

Steve snorted. "You mean your plans for a family. No girl ever woulda wanted me."

"Pfft! Sure they woulda, if you'da stopped getting the stuffin' beat out of you in back alleys every other day."

"What do you ask?" Steve asked quietly.

James leaned his head back. "I think... Hydra... did a lot of experiments on me. They wanted to perfect the serum. Cryogenics. Brainwashing techniques. But they also used my DNA, and genetic material. They couldn't have you, but I was Zola's greatest success, and the closest he ever got to copying Erkstein's formula."

Steve was silent.

"They wanted an army Steve."

"I know."

"They only got you. It wasn't good enough. So... in the 60's, they did experiments on children. They worked, to a degree, but it was imperfect. So they... made their own."

"What are you saying?"

"Hydra worked with a program called Red Room to genetically engineer children."

"They bred soldiers."

"Highly specialized assassins, yes."

"Red Room... Natasha..."

"Was from Red Room, yes. I trained her."

Steve looked at James questioningly.

"I... I think she's my daughter."

"Buck..."

"There were five of them in the beginning. I helped train them," Bucky said putting his head in his hands. "They were perfect. Beautiful, and deadly, like the spiders they are named for. They were too perfect. They wanted out. They realized they had more potential as mercenaries. They tried to leave. Red Room woke me, and I took them out. One by one." James was breathing heavily, his breathing choked. 

Steve moved to sit beside him. "But Natasha...?"

"I left her alive. My programming was slipping by the time I found her."

Steve was silent at his side. 

"I had daughters Stevie.... I had them, and I trained them to be killers, and then I killed them," James said, his voice cracking as he succumbed to sobs. 

"Shh, shh, Bucky, James, look at me," Steve said. "Red Room did that. Hydra did that. You left Natasha alive."

"But I killed the others."

"The Asset did.  _ **You** left her alive,_ " Steve emphasized. 

"Steve, what do I do?"

"You move on Товарищ," a voice said from the doorway. "We're Russian, it's what we do."

James huffed a laugh, looking up at Natasha. "I'm American." 

"Even better. American's can move on like no one else can."

"Natalia..."

"They wanted to die James," Natasha said calmly. 

"What?"

"That's why they went to big cities. They were ready to die. They knew their kills would be quick and clean if you were sent. They were ready. I was not. That is why I hid farther away, and in the country. I was not ready. I'm still not," Natasha said with a small smile. "We are survivors you and I."

"I doubt if it's a good thing," James muttered. 

"And yet, here we are, sitting in Капитан Америка's kitchen at 3 o'clock in the morning crying over spilled milk. We are here, so we live for them. We wipe our hands of Hydra, of Red Room, and we atone for our sins."

James looked up at her, leaning his head on Steve's arm. "Alright."

"Get some sleep boys. I won't be taking it easy on you tomorrow. Stark's got me some new toys," she said with a grin.

Steve wrapped his arm around Bucky's shoulders. "I think you'll both survive. Like she said, you already have."

James huffed, his eyes closed.

"What do you say we go back to bed, huh? I want to be rested if I'm getting my ass kicked by your kid tomorrow," Steve said standing. 

"How do you think I'll feel? She's my kid and she can kill me!" James said letting Steve pull him up from the floor. 

Steve grinned. "I always knew your children would."

"Now, we just gotta find your mystery kids," James joked. 

"Don't even joke about it. Richards or Stark might get some bright idea about alternate universes or something..." Steve said leading James back to Steve's room. "Come on Buck. We're not gonna sleep separately tonight. Think of it as some more reminiscing. Reliving the good old days."

"If you steal all the blankets like in the good old days, I will not regret the retaliation," James warned. 

"Deal," Steve said climbing back into his bed. 

James climbed in on the other side. "Goodnight Stevie. Thanks for not giving up on me."

"I was only returning the favour Jerk."

"Punk."


End file.
